


Broken Shards

by Angel_RC22



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: AU ending, Gen, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, let's torture Sammy Boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 14:36:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angel_RC22/pseuds/Angel_RC22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternative ending to 2.08.  </p>
<p>Things don't turn out quite the way he wants them to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Shards

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2007 & posted at the Life in 1973 LJ community. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Life on Mars.

Sam! Help us!"

"Tyler!"

1973 fades in a blaze of white light.

He wakes up in hospital; his Mum and the surgeon, Frank Morgan, are leaning over him; it's 2006. Weeks of rehabilitation to strengthen his atrophied muscles follow, stretching into months. Sam's glad of the pain, and the effort that leaves him exhausted. It helps to block the dreams. Morgan told him the tumour is benign but inoperable, too closely entwined with the surrounding brain tissue to risk removal. Maybe this is why 1973 stays with him, haunts him, night after night.

_"Sam! Help us!"_

_He sees Annie, cowering in the shadow of the tunnel wall, with a terrified Chris beside her; her hands are covered in his blood._

_He sees Ray, sprawled motionless on the railway track._

_"Tyler!"_

_He sees Gene running towards him, Gene crashing to his knees as a bullet rips through his leg, Gene being jerked back like a puppet on a string as a second bullet ploughs into him. Sam wants to help, but he's rooted to the spot; he can only watch, powerless._

Sam usually wakes up crying.

After months of convalescence, the doctors finally pronounce him fit for duty. Sam knows he should be happy, but policing in 2006, with its 'rights' and political correctness and **endless** bloody **meetings** , seems sterile and detached. What Sam finds he misses most of all is the easy camaraderie of a close-knit team. He even begins to miss Gene's insults. Sometimes he thinks about searching the police archives, but fear stops him every time; fear that, if he probes too deeply, the dreams will stop. They are all he has left of 1973.

In the end, he can't bear it any longer; he has to go. Sam makes 2006 disappear in a blaze of blue sky and sunshine.

~

"Sam! Help us! Please come back!"

In 1973, Sam steps out of the darkness of the railway tunnel, raises his weapon and takes out Johns with two shots that fling the man backwards to lie, unseeing, on the grassy embankment.

"I promised I'd come back," he tells Annie, who's smiling and crying all at once. Ray’s glaring daggers at him, and Sam knows he’ll have to put up with some shit from Gene and the rest of the team over this, but Sam doesn’t care; he knows that this is where he’s meant to be.

Fate has a habit of kicking Sam in the nuts, though, and today is no exception even now Sam’s accepted 1973 as reality. He’s been expecting Gene to snarl at him, call him a Judas and worse, but Gene hasn’t said a word, hasn't moved, and Sam's suddenly worried.

"Guv?"

Sandy-blonde eyelashes twitch and flutter, and Gene's eyes focus on him at last. His lips are moving, but no sound emerges, just a thin trickle of blood that makes Sam's heart freeze. Sam recognises his name on Gene's lips, but also other names too

_Bastard. Judas._

Gene coughs; it's a horrible, wet, bubbling sound and fresh blood spills down his chin. Sam's down on his knees in a heartbeat, ignoring Ray's threats, trying to locate the wound as Gene's breathing becomes more and more laboured.

"Come on Guv, stay with me! Guv ... _Gene_! Stay with me!" Sam's desperate, he's pleading, but it's no use; he feels the exact moment when Gene Hunt's life drains away, and he howls at the injustice of it until his throat is raw.

~

Predictably, Fate kicks Sam in the nuts yet again. He's appointed Acting DCI in Gene's place, but it's a promotion he neither wants nor needs. There's a Gene-sized hole in the team, and it's a hole he won't ever be able to fill. Not that's there's going to be much of a team to lead. Chris is so traumatised by everything that happened that he hands in his notice; Ray's injury means he's likely to spend the rest of his career behind a desk, if he isn't retired on medical grounds first and Annie's talking about putting in for a transfer. It's as if Gene was the glue that held them all together, and without him, they're all just broken shards.

Sam wonders, _is this hell?_


End file.
